Picture this – it's the day of the big on-sale for your event. The Facebook campaigns are ready to go, you've got artists ready to post your line-up and the street posters are being pasted up as we speak. What if, all of a sudden, your social media following was reduced to zero, with as much warning.
I know what you're thinking... your event page probably hasn't fallen foul of Facebook or Twitter's rules surrounding the incitement of an armed coup – but if there's anything to learn from recent events it's that your social media following doesn't belong to you.
Firstly, there are a myriad of reasons why Facebook may deem a page unsuitable to post new content (or take the page down all together). Even Mark Zuckerberg himself has admitted that Facebook's moderation team makes as many as 300,000 mistakes every single day. This is especially true for pages that frequently post video content which contains copyrighted music.
Despite your best efforts, sometimes you might find yourself on the wrong side of the social media giant's good will – a few more times and it could be game over for your event.
Own your own data and use it how you want
When Donald Trump's social media accounts were suspended in January 2021, he lost his single greatest marketing asset – his followers. Free and instant access to hundreds of millions of followers wiped out overnight.
So how as promoters, can we avoid this situation and protect revenue streams moving forward? The answer is relatively simple. You must own your data to control it.
By focussing on collecting 'First-Party Data', you'll build a database of contact details for your audience that you can engage outside of the major social media platforms.
- Collect email addresses in order to send emails to your audiences about new events, pre-sales and competitions
- Collect phone numbers to do the same with SMS marketing
Collecting this first-party data also allows you to upload this data to Facebook Custom Audiences in the event your page is taken down and you still want to run ads to those who have interacted with your events in the past.
At Audience Republic we've helped thousands of event promoters around the world take control of their audience data to grow their engagement and sell more tickets. Sign up for a free account today or request a demo.
